ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 extends Chapter 5. I temporarily leave the model in order to more fully explore the way that, in child development, prediscursive affective conversations come to give meaning to later-developing symbolic forms. We revisit object relations through the brilliance of Donald Winnicott and, from Winnicott through Benjamin, explore the developing relationship between intrapsychic being and intersubjective life. In particular, this chapter builds from dyadic to triadic relations and the introduction of an “it” world. We build understanding toward the difficult paradox of illusion and disillusionment in learning and the critical role of the witness in order for there to be a self. That is, for there to be a subject-other, external to the self, one in whose eyes one can find oneself witnessed, the internal-object representation of that other must suffer destruction. This principle recurs throughout the book. It is central to the possibility of mature co-recognition, something Benjamin has called the mutuality of subject-to-subject relating.
